Welcome to Tenfoot Two!
If you’re not from the city of Hull, then you may not know what a ‘tenfoot’ is – I have to confess that despite being a native, the term was unknown to me until my early twenties, owing to the fact that there were none in the area where I grew up. You may know them as alleys, back passages, ginnels, snickets, but in Hull, tenfoots often give shared access to the rear of houses or a block of garages, which may or may not necessarily be ten foot (feet) wide. They were places where kids got up to mischief, cars were abandoned, and burglars plied their nightly trade. Many of them are now inaccessible to most due to security gating. We are Hull, we are Tenfoot City.
Kingston upon Hull, to give it its posh name, is often overlooked and undervalued, mostly by people who have never been here. We were ‘the forgotten city’ during the second world war. Our suffering under the nightly German bombing runs was so great that it was actually blanked out of the news coverage to avoid upsetting the listeners. The BBC only remembered where we were in 2017 when they gave us a spot on the weather chart for the first time.
But this website isn’t primarily about Hull, it’s about getting away from it! It’s basically a place to store my travel memories, because as I get older I find that my brain becomes ever more unreliable for the job. It’s a place I can come back to when I need a reminder of all the fun that I’ve had.
I also use it sometimes to express opinions. It matters not whether you agree or disagree, as I don’t allow comments; it just gives me the chance to get things off my chest.
So if you’re a stranger and you happen to stumble by, I hope you find something of interest and loiter a while. But if not then I wish you luck in your onward journey and hope that your surfing brings you to a happy place.
…oh by the way, there are two of us:
My partner Jill also lives at Tenfoottwo, you’ll probably find her doing some crafting or family history when she’s not busy shouting out about how wonderful our city is.